


Yew-Wood

by lferion



Series: Iron and Light [7]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Poetry, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Yews of Erebor</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yew-Wood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hobbit Yule, day 30, prompt - Evergreen.
> 
> Part of the Iron and Light AU.

* * *

Needle green and aril red  
Bend the bow and ward the dead

Yews like stout sentinels stood ranked on the hillside, berries glowing flame and embers in the low, cold sunlight of deep winter, dark green needles tipped white with frost. The Archenwood, the bow-wood, from whence came the supple, deadly staves of the bows — short and long, recurve or straight, metalled, laminated, banded or cleverly compounded with gears and wires and pulleys — once made by the bowyers of Erebor and Dale. But it was also named the mourningwood, the grove of sighs, for below the gnarled roots, far beneath the stone were the Halls of Silence, the tombs of the dead.

Aril crimson, needle sharp  
Haft the spear and sound the harp

Old the trees were, little touched by Smaug's wrath, growing slow and sturdy in their vale, broad, low tops beneath his notice. They missed the days when Dwarves would come beneath their branches, choosing wood for their work — weapons, instruments, useful things, beautiful things — they understood the low, hard syllables of Khuzdul before they ever heard the more liquid tongue of the Eldar. Other yews might have other loyalties, but this wood had known the first Thorin, rejoiced at the coming of the Dwarves to Erebor. They rejoiced again at the fall of the dragon and the mountain king's return.

Needle deadly, aril bright  
Heart embrace the king by right

Thorin was still not entirely steady on his feet, and the open sky was almost an assault after so long in stone, even with the bones of the Mountain all around and under him, but the ancient yew-wood was not only an unexpected survivor of both the long ago horror and the more recent (disturbingly immediate in his own mind, and at the same oddly distant) conflagration and battle, but a locus of tradition, older than the finding of the Arkenstone, old as the first of his Name. The hollow center of the oldest tree held refuge, respite, and knowledge. 

Aril sweet and needle dark  
Durin's Sons know well my mark


End file.
